Thistledown Nest in Marshfield is home to furniture restoration artist

MARSHFIELD – Christine Clarke has expended many years honing design and maker abilities throughout a lot of disciplines, from painting and sculpting to upholstery and lost-wax casting.

Each individual of her varied expertise can be seen throughout Thistledown Nest, her workshop and showroom on Webster Road, from concluded items to these just now getting new appreciate and treatment.

Christine Clarke is reflected in the mirror of a vanity that she refurbished at her store, Thistledown Nest in Marshfield, on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022.

A Kingston native, Clarke returned to the South Shore with her daughter past 12 months from California’s Bay Space, exactly where she was sole proprietor of a ornamental portray and structure exercise.

In a move that she explained as incredibly abnormal for her, she rented the space she now occupies at 844 Webster St. unseen. Formerly a yoga studio, she rapidly received to perform transforming the purple, pink and gentle blue place into the excellent place for furniture restoration.

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“I experienced a eyesight and I just went to operate,” Clarke said. “I did it largely all myself. I failed to deliver a entire good deal of stuff with me from California, so I just got to perform.”

No traces of the earlier tenant continues to be. The area has reverted to a rustic industrial fashion, with all interest concentrated on the intricate items décor Clarke breathes new lifetime into.

Even the structural columns in the house act as element of her portfolio. Earlier vibrant and colorful, Clarke hand painted the vertical beams with a wooden grain design and style indistinguishable from the real detail.

Providing classic items new, modern life

Numerous people with very good high quality household furniture have experienced it handed down from past generations and never know what to do with the items, Clarke reported. They can be uncomfortable and out of day, or basically don’t match the design and style of the current owners’ area.

“Persons have pieces that are beautiful but no just one needs them simply because it is filled with horse hair, it is not cozy,” Clarke claimed. “It truly is all dusty and filthy and it’s also dark and heavy for modern day properties.”

Numerous of these pieces have sentimental benefit, she claimed, and though folks do not want to get rid of them, they never know how to incorporate them into their life. That’s where Clarke arrives in.

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“What I seriously like to do is rework classic things, home furniture with fantastic bones,” she stated. “Persons like points light and shiny, with extra colors, more brightness. The previous home furniture which is hand carved and fantastically constructed just appears to be like so major.”

Clarke is able to pull from her decades of experience to discover the ideal methods to refinish or repurpose clients’ items, from stripping down the finish and applying a new stain or paint color to full re-upholstery with modern components, molding and changing missing trim or style factors. She can also add decorative painting to match other components in the place the piece will dwell in.

“You do have to be mindful, for the reason that not each piece of household furniture is truly worth that a lot elbow grease, but a ton are,” she mentioned. “When you have something which is built of wooden which is solid and hand carved, let’s keep it out of the landfill, since it is really greater than the sawdust that you might be acquiring from Wayfair.”

From restoration university student to grasp

Since acquiring her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Clarke has spent decades functioning in the residence style place, and her operate can be found across the nation and even internationally.

She began out as a ornamental painter, a occupation that led her to working in murals, bronze foundry, sculpting, mold making, restoration and attractive furniture perform, as properly as misplaced-wax casting, a method of metal casting in which a molten metal is poured into a mold that has been established by means of a wax model. She also restored and refitted antique photo frames, parts of artwork and upholstery.

She explained she is significantly captivated to “the aged world skill of it all.”

Her time as a muralist integrated get the job done at the Breakers Mansions in Newport, Rhode Island multiple casinos in Las Vegas P.F. Chang places to eat and a resort casino in Dubai.

Settling in on the South Shore

Clarke mentioned she has been fast paced with consumer perform due to the fact opening officially in Oct 2021, and is preferably operating on a two- to three-month direct time. The style individuals want in their properties in this article differs from Californians, she reported, and she’s quickly adapting to this transform.

“I am trying to figure out what the region wishes to see and how I can greatest serve what people today want,” she claimed. “I hope to establish into a company that sustains not just me, but a few of other artisans and delivers a provider that men and women recognize.”